Bliss Carman's

Sappho Lyrics

Acknowledged pre-eminent among Greek lyrists, the poems of Sappho were quoted and eulogized by her literary contemporaries and their successors during ten centurfes and there is reason to believo were widely read down to near the end of the fourth century of the present era. Then they disappeared. The cause of that disappearance has never been satisthe factorily solved, but theory most generally accepted is that in A. D. 380 the works of Sappho were burned at Byzantlum by command of Gregory Nazianzen, on the ground that they were not as conducive to morality among the people as his own poems, which he ordered to be studied in place of those of the Lesbian poetess. It is supposed that in the holocaust nine books of edes, with epithalamia, epigrams, elegles and monodies, were destroyed, all that we now know of her works bein gathered from the writings of other Greek authors who quoted and commented on the work of Sappho. In this way have been preserved two odes and a few fragmentary passages, whose quality justify the eulogies of her contemporaries and later Greek writers.

One

It was a daring task that Bliss Carman entered upon when, in "Sappho: Hundred Lyrics," he attempted to reconstruct from the few scattered fragments that have come down to us, that number of the "lost poems of Sappho." What that undertaking means is clearly stated in the concluding paragraph of the introduction to the volume by Charles G. D. Roberts, himself, like Bliss Carman, x Canadian poot, who has settled on this side of the border and found appreciative readers of his poems. Mr. Roberts say": "Perhaps the most perilous and most alluring venture in the whole field of poetry is that which Mr Carman has undertaken in attempting to give us, in English verse, those lost poems of Sappho, of which fragments have survived. The task is obviously not one of ftranslation or of paraphrasings, but of imaginative and, at the same time, interpretive construction. It is as if a sculptor of today were to set himself, with reverence, and trained craftsmanship, and studious familiarity with the spirit, technique, and atmosphere of his subject, to restore some statues of Polyclitus or Praxiteles, of which he had but a broken arm, à foot, a knee, a finger, upon which to build. Mr. Carman's meth od, apparently, has been to imagine each lost lyric as discovered, and then to translate it; for the indefinable flavor of the translation is maintained throughout, though accompanied by the fluidity and freedom of purely original work."

Those familiar with the poetic work of Bliss Carman, who have listened to the music of his "Pipes of Pan," know the elusive charm of many of his shorter "swallow flights of song," a charm that is felt but is not easy to describe. It is the charm characteristic of the few fragments of the Sappho lyrics 'that have come down to us, and which can but be inadequately conveyed by the best translation. It is better preserved in the renderings by Bliss Carman than in those of any of his predecessors, and in his imaginings of the Sappho lyrics absolutely lost to the world the same quality is preserved to a Burprising degree. As an example of the rendering of a genuine Sappho fragment and

its completion take the best known, which has been frequently attempted by Byron among others to the weakening of its charm through expansion. A prose translation of the original fragment is this:

Evening, thou bringest all that lightbringing morning bath scattered; thou briugest the sheep, thou bringest the goat, thou bringest the child to the mother.

In his fourteenth lyric Bliss Carman felicitiously renders the genuine fragment and adds two lines to give it completeness as a love song:

Hesperus, bringing together

All that the morning star scattered,

Sheep to be folded in twilight, Children for mothers to fondle,-

Me too will bring to the dearest, Tenderest breast in all Lesbos.

In his twenty-first lyric he takes up the same fragment and expands it to sixteen lines, making an exquisite little poem of the true Sappho quality: Softly the first step of twilight Falls on the darkening dini, One by one kindle the lights In Mitylone.

Noises are hushed in the courtyard, The busy day is departing, Children are called from their games,— Herds from their grazing.

And from the deep-shadowed angles Comes the soft murmur of lovers, Then through the quiet of dusk Bright sudden laughter.

K

From the hushed street, through the portal Where' soon my lover will enter, Comes the purè strain of a flute Tender with passion.

Another woll known fragment is thus happily rendered in the sixteenth lyric: In the apple boughs the coolness Murmurs, and the gray leaves flicker Where sleep wanders,

In this garden all the hot noon

I awalf thy fluttering footfall

Through the twilight.

The same theme inspires the fortysixth lyric:

I seek and desire Even as the wind That travels the plain And stirs in the bloom Of the apple tree.

I wander through life, With the searching wind That is never at rest, Till I reach the shade Of my lover's door.

Two other fragments of genuine S.p= pho lyrics have been combined to make the first two vorses of the fifty-third lyric:

Art thon the topmost apple The gatherers could not_reach, Reddening on the bough? Shall I not take thee?

Art thou a byacinth blossom The shepherds upon the bills Flave trodden into the ground? Shall I not lift thee?

Free is the young god Eros Paying no tribute to power Seeing no evil in beauty, Full of compassion.

Once having found the beloved, However sorry or woeful, However scornful of loving, Little it matters.

With one more illustration of the manner in which Bliss Carman's muse has. been inspired by the Sappho spirit these extracts must close. It is the twentyninth lyric:

Ah, what am I but a torrent, Headstrong, impetuous, broken, Like the spent clamour of waters In the blue canyon?

Ab, what art thou but a fern-frond, Wet with blown spray from the river, Diffident, lovely, sequestered, Frail on the rock ledge?

4

Yet, are we not for one brief day, While the sun sleeps on the mountain, Wild hearted lover and loved one, Safe in Pan's keeping?

Bliss Carman's "Sappho; One Hundred Lyrics," has been issued by L. C. Page & Co., Boston, in a limited edition of 750 numbered copies, beautifully printed on the De Vinne press and the type afterwards distributed. The ordinary edition is of 500 copies, the remainder being divided into a large paper edition on hand made English paper, and one on Japanese vellum. bound in tull cried volCarman. lum, with the autograph of